Benefits of Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine can often work well
side by side with conventional treatments providing safe,
well tolerated remedies especially in chronic illnesses.
Indeed the renaissance of herbal medicine in Western countries
is partly because no effective conventional treatment as yet
exists for many chronic illnesses, such as irritable bowel
syndrome, arthritis, eczema and asthma. Concern over
side effects of modern medicines is also and additional reason
for people to look for gentler forms of treatment.

Despite great advances and advantages of conventional or
allopathic medicine, herbal medicine still has a great deal
to offer. People forget that upto the last 60 years
or so we relied almost entirely on plants to treat all kinds
of illnesses from coughs and colds to dangerous life threatening
conditions such as malaria and tuberculosis. The resurgence
of herbal medicine today is because the efficacy of antibiotics,
which once had near-universal effectiveness against infection,
is on the wane. Over the years infectious organisms
have become resistant to synthesized drugs. The herb
Chinese Wormwood (Artemesia annua) and its active constituent
artemisin are now being used to treat malaria in areas of
the world where the disease has become resistant to conventional
treatment.

So
what is Herbal Medicine?

Herbal Medicine or Herbalism, Phytotherapy or Botanical Medicine,
is the use of herbs for their therapeutic or medicinal value.
As part of their response to their environment plants produce
an array of chemicals called secondary metabolites that help
the plant survive. These chemicals might be used by the plant
to attract/repel insects, kill micro-organisms, induce growth,
store energy, store waste products or for many other uses
we can’t even begin to understand. These secondary metabolites
are responsible for the medicinal effects of the plants. Herbalists
use the leaves, flowers, stems, berries, and roots of plants
to prevent, relieve, and treat illness. Science sees many
herbal treatments as unsound due to the lack of experimental
evidence to support traditional or historical use, this has
always been and probably always will be a bone of contention
for herbal medicine. There are many issues that are involved
here such as herb quality and variability, use of herbal extracts,
placebo effects, lack of desire to test a product that can’t
be patented, influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical
training. Sadly herbal medicine is a political hot potato,
to accept there will never be agreement is probably the best
stance. Many modern drugs have a plant history. As chemistry
advanced and plant extracts were analysed then it became easier
to make “similar” products to those isolated from
plants. Aspirin is an example of this, being basically a laboratory
created variant of a salt isolated from Meadowsweet and later
Willow bark. Chemical production of medicines has a couple
of financial implications, firstly it means you can secure
your compound from being copied by a patent and secondly it’s
cheaper to make than having to grow the plants to put through
a costly extraction process. The advent of patent medicines and magic
bullet medicines like penicillin (Isolated from a mould!)
may have contributed to the down turn of Herbal Medicine in
the last century. The reality is, however, that herbal medicine
has a long and respected history and is still used by 80%
of the worlds population.